The Nobel committee’s decision last year to award the Peace Prize to the freshly elected President Obama was considered by many to be an unusual choice, but the committee could top itself this year. The list of potential winners contains 237 nominees, including human rights activists like Russian Svetlana Gannushkina and Chinese activist Liu Xiaobo, but also our very own Internet.

The effort to get the net nominated was spearheaded by the Italian edition of Wired magazine. The editors propose that apart from being a place for people to nurture their vanity and satisfy their need to look at kittens in costumes, the Internet is also a forum for peaceful dialogue and communication. Thus, they say, it plays a valuable role in building peace.

Read the rest of my post for Discover magazine here.

More power to The New Dorks!

Now, a new website called ShadyURL.com is generating a few laughs for its service that claims to “make your Twitter followers a little more uneasy.” The web service shortens web addresses into “suspicious and frightening” links that would anyone think hard before clicking on.

For example:
Facebook.com became http://5z8.info/56-DEPLOY-TROJAN-287.mw9—-_i6f3e__init_download
Twitter.com turned into http://5z8.info/trojan_j7r7z_inject_worm

Read the rest of my post for Discover Magazine here.

This is where old decommissioned aircraft from the US military go to die. It’s an enormous graveyard of planes. Nicknamed “The Boneyard” the location just outside Tuscon covers 2,600 acres and houses over 4200 military aircraft valued at a whopping $35 billion dollars (Hmm..maybe if the US could sell all these birds as scrap to China, maybe they could make some cash off it. Just a thought)

The base holds a whole range old aircraft–from B-52s, B-1s and F-111s that once carried nuclear arms. There are also, tons of F-14 Tomcats and PopSci reports that they spotted F-15s, F-16s, C-130s, KC-135 refueling tankers, A-10s.

This is truly exciting and I am most excited Google Earth has released these pictures. There goes the rest of my afternoon! Click here for a supersize close-up of The Boneyard.

It’s either “Wow, what a great day,” or a link to some goobaliciously nonsensical crap that they find interesting.

Dude, take a hint! We don’t want yet another update of your “unawesome ” life or twitpic of some random city you went to for a conference. Dunder Mifflin alert!

Anyhoo–now if you hate someone’s tweet–you can poop on it. Not literally, of course–that would be a wonder of science–but through the new iPhone app called “Bird Turd.”

The idea is similar to Facebook’s “Like” option, except this is the “Unlike” version for Twitter.

The app’s description reads: Bird Turd makes Twitter a game. In Bird Turd, YOU are the bird. And when you see a tweet you don’t like, YOU CAN POOP RIGHT ON IT.

The developers explained to Huffington Post: ‘Just tap the screen and the bird will furrow his brow and squeeze out an enormous turd!’ the developers explain. The app’s developer plans to keep track of the ‘most-pooped-on tweets,’ with the worst receiving a bronze, silver or gold ‘turd’ as an ‘anti-prize.’

Wow, an “anti-prize!” I am most amused. Now, go play, while I Bird Turd your tweets.

You might also like:
Twitter Goes To The Dogs, Literally
4 Ways to Attract Followers on Twitter
How Twitter Can Make You Look Like A TWIT

DISCOVER magazine’s Carl Zimmer responded by taking the opposite stance, and declaring that Google is making us smarter. He argued that humans are “natural born cyborgs” and the internet is our “giant extended mind.” He wrote that there was “nothing unnatural about relying on the internet—Google and all—for information…. Nor is there anything bad about our brains’ being altered by these new technologies, any more than there is something bad about a monkey’s brain changing as it learns how to play with a rake.”

Now, a new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project agrees with Zimmer; it found that Google is indeed making us smarter by allowing us to make better choices. More than 76 percent of the 895 experts polled said Nicholas Carr was wrong in thinking that Google made us stupid.

Read the rest of my post for Discover magazine here.

January data released on compete.com now shows that the social networking site Facebook had a whopping 134 unique visitors in January.  Fb seems to be galloping ahead, collecting not just eyeballs but also engaging its visitors in a way that Google and Yahoo can’t. The January figures show that in that month, 11.6% of all time spent online was spent on Fb ( Yahoo had 4.25 % and Google 4.1%)

So if Facebook is advancing ahead, the geeks at Google aren’t sitting back and checking email–they are, as one journalist pointed out, advancing their tanks across Facebook’s lawns.  Last week saw the disastrous but interesting roll-out of Google buzz that taps into existing Gmail contacts to create a social networking system of its own, then Google bought up Aardvark-another site that lets users “tap the knowledge of people in your network.”

But whether Google manages to trounce Facebook is anyone’s guess. Already, The Times points out FB has 400 million active users (that is up from 200 last summer-Observer.com) who share five billion pieces of content a week and upload more than three billion photos each month. On an average, the report says, people spend more than 55 minutes a day on Facebook – and that is an advertising goldmine. As we also spend more time on our iPhone, iPads and the like- money is quite literally where the mobile is and there are millions others who use their mobile to access Facebook than get on Google.

So what is the future for the two big giants? We don’t know yet. But we’ll keep an eye out-between our Googling and updating status on Facebook.

You might also be interested in:
Twitter Goes To The Dogs, Literally
Facebook Is Taking Over The World
Why You Should Google Yourself

A new product by toy giant Mattel called “Puppy Tweets” lets the whole universe get a peek into your dog’s daily activities. The colorful little device hangs from your dog’s collar, and when it detects movement or barking it sends a message via wi-fi to your computer. The messages are translated into pre-programmed tweets and get broadcast directly via Twitter. Your pet’s twitter followers can stay up to date with the latest as he wakes, poops, and woofs.

Read the rest of my post for Discover Magazine -here.

A new iPhone App now streams live, mugshots from across US jails

Ah, the iPhone. What would life be without it?

You can get directions, make dinner reservations, break up via text and now, thanks to the latest app, you can get live streaming mugshots on your phone! Wait–is that mom?

Arrested! Mobile Mugshots prides itself on “Real People! Real Arrests! Real Mugshots! We collect mugshots from jails all over the USA and post them for you to view.”

The iPhone app, gratis on iTunes, serves up police pics from around the United States with full names, birth date, age, the date and time of arrest as well as the alleged crime.

Finally, a way to track Lindsay Lohan’s movements!

Check out some recent perps here.

This post originally appeared on Discoblog

"Gaaa Gaaa, Oh La La La, Ooh Gaaa Gaaa" - With the Ipod,you can now listen to Lady Ga Ga's incomprehensible babble that passes for lyrics, on the go! The Ipod gets our nod for "smart product of the decade"

The smartest products are easy to list.

I have my favorites, you have yours. But am pretty sure, we could all agree on the all-round awesomeness of the I-phone, the i-pod, the blackberry, the movie Avatar, Facebook and the SNUGGIE!

But what about the dumbest stuff people thought we could use this decade?

The folks over at Inc.com, put together this list of dumbest products of the decade. The list includes The Comfort Wipe – an anatomically designed toilet paper extender for the germaphobe in your life and the BodySnake which  is for folks too rotund to wash their backs.

The list, however, baffles by not including Dunkin Donuts’ donut drinks (remember those).  It also thumbs a nose at all of us indulging in that time sink called Social Media – calling it one of the dumbest products of the decade. WHATTT? Thats just plainnnn nuts!